Critical Compendium » Alfred Kazin: A Biography, by Richard M. Cook
Alfred Kazin: A Biography, by Richard M. Cook

“While Richard M. Cook’s excellent biography of Kazin does describe the genesis, character and reception of such books as On Native Grounds (1942), Bright Book of Life (1973) and An American Procession (1984), it also reveals a lonely, envious, restless man, riven by deep feeling and severe contradiction. Alfred Kazin was, by turns, an opportunistic hustler who could win visiting professorships to prestigious colleges and then proceed to alienate his new colleagues with his condescension or contempt; a husband who cheated on three successive wives; a socially awkward Brownsville boy who instinctively bristled at the patrician smoothness of the despised Lionel Trilling; and a “private reader” who felt out of step as much with the New Criticism of the 1940s as with the literary theory of the 1970s. Nonetheless, he could also be a superb guide to American and English literature.” Read the review at the Washington Post.

Filed under: Biography, Nonfiction | Posted 02.27.08 | Comments:


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An interview with Steve LeVine, author of The Oil and the Glory

"Big Oil is dying . . . The jury is out on whether the average consumer will be affected. The oil companies say with some justification that the state-owned companies don’t produce oil and natural gas as well as they – Big Oil – can. They say that means less and less supply – or at least not as much supply as might be expected – from these countries in the coming years. That’s important, especially since tight global supplies are one reason for $95-a-barrel oil right now." [ Read the rest of the interview ]



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